Fury of nursery parents at £2,000 in fines for parking

MOTHERS collecting children at lunchtime from an empty car park next to a Thames Ditton nursery ended up having to pay a private clamping firm more than £2,000 between them to drive their cars away last week.

Signs had been erected outside the private car park on Woodfield Road in Thames Ditton, at the request of residents in Twickenham Place, a new block of flats opposite the nursery.

Police were called to the scene to negotiate with the contractors, but the mothers all had to pay £255 each to release their cars.

A spokesman for the clamping firm, Vehicle Clamping Securities, said the operation was a last resort after pleas for the mothers not to use the car park were ignored.

“We put signs up there warning these people not to park there,” he said. “We have written to the nursery and the nursery has sent out newsletters to all the mothers advising them not to park there.”

Although the car park is empty in the middle of the day, residents of the flats opposite have had problems in the morning and evenings.

One Mercedes owner had his car’s wing mirror smashed and other cars had been dented, he said.

The company spokesman added that each resident had paid £10,000 for their parking space plus an additional yearly sum for the car park’s maintenance.

“To be fair we have given them enough chances to move on. We watched them get out of their cars and then we clamped them. We don’t deny it. We had to get the message across,” he said.

The contractors would only accept cash. One driver was told this is because of past problems with credit card fraud.

Alison Sellers runs the Stepping Stones Nursery, which has been open for the past three-and-a-half years.

She told the News & Mail that the residents’ association had never been in contact with her about parents using the car park.

“I advised parents to use the car park, because from a safety point of view it was more sensible,” she said.

“These notices went up a couple of days ago, so obviously the residents’ association has planned this.

“The nasty thing was no one was given a chance to move on. Everyone accepts that they shouldn’t have been there but no one said that this was serious. It was done in a very vicious way.

“It is just a shame. If the residents’ association had come to see me, we could have perhaps avoided this.

“Every morning and every lunchtime, 46 cars have to park somewhere and they are going to be more of an inconvenience to the residents of these flats if they do that on the road.”

The following day that is exactly what happened.

“When they arrived here they knew it was going to be a nursery so you have to accept that there will be parking issues,” said Alison.

“It’s the residents’ association that instigated this. I would have liked to have had some sort of dialogue. They have only been in a matter of months. What we are talking about is parents dropping off children for 10 minutes — just popping in and out in an empty space.”

One mother, who asked not to be named, said: “The clampers were spotted waiting until we got out of the cars and into the school to collect our children. We just couldn’t believe the way we were ambushed.

“The following morning we all parked on the road and it caused chaos. We are just mothers with young children. The last thing we want to do is upset any residents. We were led to believe that it was OK for the few minutes it takes to drop off or collect our children.”

But the Vehicle Clamping Securities spokesman said that the number of cars was the problem. “They have had fair warning,” he said. “If it was a sting operation we would be there every morning. We had tried warning them before and it just doesn’t work.

"If it was a five-minute job, with one car it would be OK, but it’s not. We are talking about 30 cars.”